Getting to the Roots of the Problem

Infected lungs are not the root of the problem. They are the leaves (end result).

Thus, you cannot cure the problem by treating the infected lungs. It is a crisis management approach. Yes, you must manage a crisis or it can kill you. But just as you cannot "borrow your way out of debt", you cannot crisis manage your way to good health.

"Thick mucous" is not the root of the problem. It is at best a branch and at worst a completely erroneous concept.

Recent research indicates that CF patients do not have "too much" mucous but in fact have too little. All that stuff people are coughing up is infection, not mucous. This fits well with my personal experience that when I have more mucous, I have less infection and I cough up less crap. Taking extra sea salt goes a long way towards resolving this aspect of my condition.

Inflammation is not the root of the problem. It is one of the branches.

It is good that there is currently research into how to better control inflammation in CF patients. Reducing inflammation is known to reduce infection. But it is not a primary cause. It is tertiary. The primary cause of inflammation seems to largely be the misprocessing of sodium bicarbonate, which leads to excess acidity. It is the excess acidity which causes inflammation. Control the acidity and you control the inflammation.

The real roots of the problem are at the cellular level.

The cells of people with CF function differently. Two known differences are that we purge salt at high rates and we purge bicarbonate at high rates. These are the root causes of malfunction of all mucous membranes (sinus, lung, digestive tract, etc) and ph imbalance which promotes inflammation and undoubtedly other problems.